Why hypersonic flights may not take off in Asia, and the plane makers who hope to change that
Hong Kong to Los Angeles in just two hours is what some supersonic prototype planes are promising, but with a price tag of US$100 million, it may not be commercially viable
We live in the jet age. The global fleet of aircraft will double in the next 20 years, according to Airbus, and with the United Nations predicting that the world’s population is expected to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, the aviation industry looks like it is in a good position for continued growth.
With such positive prospects on the horizon, why are aircraft going at the same speeds as when the jet age started back in the 1950s? Planes now fly further distances and for longer than ever before, but the speed-obsessed supersonic days of Concorde now appear as a footnote in history.
But, not so fast. There are now supersonic planes in the prototype stage that could travel from Hong Kong to Los Angeles in just two hours, or to Sydney in 2.5 hours, according to some of the manufacturers.
Some think it could revolutionise how we get from A to B, but there are technical and business reasons the supersonic age may yet elude us.
Supersonic means to go faster than the speed of sound – Mach 1 or 1,235km/h. It was first achieved in 1947 by American pilot Chuck Yeager in a Bell X-1 aircraft; however, there are now concept aircraft that could take passengers at speeds of more than twice the speed of sound, Mach 2.